


Spectrum

by nayanroo



Category: Kyle XY
Genre: Babies, F/M, Futurefic, self-indulgent fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 20:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/pseuds/nayanroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future is a strange thing for two superintelligent people fresh out of high school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spectrum

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a friend who left a ton of prompts in my Tumblr askbox; unfortunately I wrote them while traveling and running on three hours of sleep, so I apologize for their scurrilous nature, but I have no shame and think they're cute, so enjoy!

_i. dynamics_

In AP Physics, they covered flight. Though Kyle and Jessi have been able to calculate such things without problem from almost the moment they slid out of their pods (every time they levitate they share a look and know the other is running the numbers in their mind), having to do such things longhand is somewhat soothing. But flying – like normal people, in an actual _plane_ \- that is a new experience. At least for Jessi, who has never even been out of the Seattle area, much less out of the state, and who is now on her way to college with Kyle. She actually gasps when they ground falls away into darkness as they lift off from Sea-Tac airport, all her early complaints of tiredness from having to get up at three in the morning to get to the airport forgotten. Kyle’s glad he let her have the window seat; it’s almost comical to see Jessi, usually as stoic and aloof as a young woman can be, with her nose literally pressed to the oval window.

“The equations don’t say _anything_ about a reaction from the sympathetic nervous system,” she says with a grin when the brightening sky no longer holds her attention. Kyle just returns her smile.

The questions don’t say anything about how her excitement gets the same reaction from him, either.

 

_ii. autonomy_

They’ve never had to really take care of themselves, they realize. Jessi has more of it down than Kyle, but even she doesn’t know some things, and he finds himself calling home from his dorm often until Nicole gently tells him he has to start making these decisions on his own. Developing autonomy is partly why he and Jessi have gone to Harvard (other than the fact they were practically headhunted) in the first place – the other side of the country, and far away from anyone who may want to snag a pair of superintelligent college freshmen for their own nefarious purposes. Hopefully.

That doesn’t make it any easier for Kyle to learn things like how to tip the pizza delivery man, or figure out coin-operated washing machines, which are tonight’s trial. Jessi laughs at him as she shows him what to do, and then hops up on her own machine to watch gleefully.

“What will I pass you up in next?” she wonders aloud. It’s strange to hear Jessi _teasing_ when she’s been shut off for so long, but the semester has opened her up more. At least to him, and Kyle isn’t sure what he would do if she acted toward someone else as she did toward him.

“Physics, maybe,” she’s saying. “Or programming – oh wait, I’m already better than you at that…” But unlike before, her words aren’t barbed, and her smile is free and genuine.

 

_iii. music_

Amanda comes to visit one weekend, toward the end of freshman year.

She’s with a group from Julliard – there had never been a doubt she’d get in even after what happened with her conservatory experience in high school – but the practice rooms weren’t her first stop, obviously. She just shows up at his dorm, and all the old feelings come back in a slow wave. He’s standing there, staring at her in surprise with his heart on his face and that feeling they call _butterflies_ in his stomach, when Jessi comes round the corner of the hall. Her smile dies instantly and almost a whole year of – well, whatever’s grown between them – undone in seconds. Guardedness and hurt and some of the old anger, all there, in the split-second before she turns on her heel and stalks away.

Amanda looks at Kyle and there’s hurt on her face, too. The butterflies have been replaced by solid lead. “I can explain,” he says hastily. She shakes her head, and it breaks his heart to see the hurt replaced by resignation.

“You won’t,” she says quietly. “I just needed to face the music, I guess.” She turns away, then pauses, looking back at him sadly. “I don’t think I’m the only one, either.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Kyle says, but it’s to her back as she walks away.

 

_iv. rebuilding_ and _v. imperfections_

Jessi doesn’t avoid him or anything, but she’s closed off and cold. Where before there had been conversations long into the night, the comfortable press of her against his side as they sat on her bed or his bed or a couch, there is only coldness; where they had been on the verge of what they had becoming what they wanted, there was nothing. All her gates have slammed shut.

Kyle encounters an emotion he’s only known with Amanda – heartache. It’s constricting, destructive instead of constructive. He doesn’t like the way it ties his tongue or messes with his mind.

Finally, he can avoid it no longer. It’s the week before finals, and even though he’s guaranteed to get good marks no matter what, he’s stressed and tired and heartsore. He found out last night that instead of _acceleration_ he’s put _rhinoceros_ in his paper for his engineering class, and suddenly cannot remember if he’s proofread his other work for such mistakes. Normally Jessi would be the one to point out what he was doing and grin at him as he fixes it. He needs her for that. He needs her for _more_ than that.

She’s in the library, bent over her textbook as she carefully reproduces a drawing into her notes. He knows she knows he’s coming up to her by the way she goes tense, but doesn’t relent.

“If you’re going to say you’re sorry again,” she tells him, “Don’t bother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I said don’t bother.”

“Jessi…” he takes a seat across from her. “Amanda and I are done.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“We really are, this time. It… you were right, before. It should never have been a contest.”

That makes her look up. Her eyes are slightly red. “So now you realize.”

“I should have before. And I’ll understand if you don’t want to… go back. You know. Like how we were before.”

Jessi puts her pastel stick down after a long moment, the duration of which Kyle is certain takes the entirety of his ability to hold his breath, and takes his hand. Her hazel eyes are flinty for a moment, before softening, becoming more vulnerable. “Are you sure, Kyle? Are you absolutely sure? Because if this happens again, I’m not looking back.”

Something eases in his chest, and his fingers close around hers. “I mean it.”

 

_vi. biology_

When it comes right down to it, Kyle and Jessi never even really needed to go to college, much less continue on to get advanced degrees after graduating top of their class. They could absorb any information they needed in a matter of seconds and put it to use, synthesize it and make it work for them. But when it came right down to it, what they loved to learn the most wasn’t found in any book (at least not ones found outside the self-help section) or any lecture hall; what was most important was what they learned when they sat down and talked with their classmates, or when they pressed together at night.

“Biology,” Jessi says. The study of life. Kyle puts an arm around her bare shoulders. 

Life; the surge of the blood, the movement of hormones through the body. He knows the concepts as well as Jessi does; Jessi, who found wonder in the way cells work. But they both know it’s more than that.

“The class?”

Jessi gives him a flat look. She’s got her own sense of humor, but hasn’t has as long or the right environments to develop it in. “No. More than that.”

Her hands go to her belly, and Kyle rests his hand on top of them. They’ve already used their talents to help the world; it’s time to use their knowledge of the study of life differently.

Something new, then.


End file.
